For use as display devices capable of displaying high-quality television images on a large screen as being possible to make displays at higher speed than liquid crystal panels and to be reduced in size with ease, expectations are running high for display devices e.g., color television receivers, using plasma display panels (hereinafter, referred to as “PDPs”) of displaying images by exciting, for light emission, luminous elements using ultra rays through noble gas discharge. The PDPs are receiving attention as large-screen display devices for high definition use. With attention given as such, the development is actively underway to realize an increase of the display quality, e.g., high definition and high luminance, an increase of the reliability, and a decrease of the cost.
The PDP includes a front plate and a rear plate each configured by a glass substrate or others, and the plates are disposed to face each other and hermetically sealed. The PDP forms therein a discharge space, and a discharge gas is filled in the discharge space. The PDP configured as such is provided with an exhaust pipe for, after the front plate and the rear plate are hermetically attached to each other, evacuating the discharge space and filling the space with a discharge gas. As an exemplary method of manufacturing a conventional PDP, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2001-283741 describes an example or others of using, for a glass substrate of the rear plate, glass substrate 152 that is cut into a single-plate size and processed as shown in FIG. 7, and is formed with through port 151 at corner portion 150 for provision of the exhaust pipe. The method goes through an evacuation step and an attachment step at the same time.
In order to increase the production efficiency of the PDP and reduce the manufacturing cost thereof, a so-called multi-panel manufacturing technique is considered useful, with which a structure of a PDP is formed using a single large-sized substrate glass including a plurality of glass substrates each of a predetermined size, and then is cut into glass substrates each of a predetermined size.
For application of such a multi-panel manufacturing technique, the position of the through port for provision of the exhaust pipe plays an important role. The through port is required to be formed in advance to a large-sized substrate glass. Therefore, depending on where the through port is positioned in the large-sized substrate glass, the substrate glass may be cracked or damaged, thereby causing a problem of reducing the yield.